The Yunnan Provincial Department of Water Resources recently issued a notice on the ‘Measures for the Management of Bidding and Tendering for Water Conservancy Construction Projects in Yunnan Province (Draft for Comments)’for public consultation. The “Biodiversity Conservation in Our Neighborhood” (BCON) Working Group of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) has responded positively to the call, and after careful study, the following recommendation has been put forward for reference in its scientific decision-making.
【Recommendation】It is recommended to further improve the Draft, fully taking biodiversity into account, and explicitly include the content of “biodiversity”. The relevant water conservancy construction projects should carry out comprehensive and scientific environmental impact assessment before, during and after the completion of the project and even after it is put into use, so as to ensure that the water conservancy construction projects interfere with and affect the biodiversity as little as possible, promote the harmonious coexistence of human beings and the nature, and help “curb and reverse the biodiversity loss” to achieve the Aichi Targets.
[Rationale] There is currently no “biodiversity” in the full Draft which is a significant omission. The impacts of hydraulic engineering on biodiversity are significant. For example, changes in water flow patterns and hydrological conditions lead to habitat loss and fragmentation of aquatic organisms; blockage of fish migration corridors affects fish reproduction and population maintenance; surface hardening (e.g., hardening of riverbanks) leads to loss of aquatic organisms’ habitat; and introduction of exotic species leads to invasion of organisms and extinction of native species, etc.
[Lesson learnt] The ecological management of the five streams in Cangshan, Dali, Yunnan Province, in which the river bottom was hardened with cement and 300 million RMB was invested, has brought about incalculable ecological damage.
See Media report:
‘Cementing the river bottom and hardening the river channel,’ Dali Cangshan Wuxi’s ecological management has stirred up controversy – China News Service.
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/sh/2020/05-17/9186596.shtml
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